


(cats, they offer) no angles to the wind

by noirshitsuji



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste's Mask, Conflict-Avoidant Adrien Agreste, Confusing Adrien Agreste, F/M, Gabriel Agreste & Adrien Agreste - Freeform, Introspection, Kagami Tsurugi's Mask, Mentioned Chloé Bourgeois, POV Kagami Tsurugi, Parental Relationships, Referenced Couffaine siblings, Referenced Lila Rossi, Referenced Mylène Haprèle, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26622208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noirshitsuji/pseuds/noirshitsuji
Summary: They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes(...); counter-attack with non-resistance; twist enticing through the curving fingers––and leave anangeredempty fist.Kagami's name means mirror in Japanese; maybe this is why she gets so lost in Adrien's reflection.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Alya Césaire & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Nino Lahiffe, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Kagami Tsurugi, Kagami Tsurugi & Tomoe Tsurugi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	(cats, they offer) no angles to the wind

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [azalera's fic](https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/26518399) for the Miraculous Writer's Guild's September event. This piece is not related to the other one; it is my own take on Kagami and Adrien's characters/relationship. Title, summary, and Easter Egg in text from [this poem.](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cats-2/)

Adrien’s smile cuts her, but she can detect no insincerity in it. 

She can feel the faded scars from wounds she’d accumulated around the age of four when she looks at it; she’d just started mastering the sword then, a child toying with small knives whenever the adults were out of sight.

But this is different because Adrien is a blade she has been trained from birth to master. There are no steps to the invisible social dance they do that they have missed: not a single foot in the mouth or a hand at the wrong part of the body or an ill-timed remark.

_ (Really, what do you like about him?  _ Chat Noir asks her when he takes her home after her akumatisation, and she gives him a look meant to convey how much he is overstepping but stays mute not because it’s none of her business, but because the look in his eyes confuses her.)

The others don’t see it, Kagami is sure: the others haven’t grown up being clay dolls, a mother’s personal project or a father’s ever-elusive pride. They can have a hair out of place (Marinette, on most mornings), athlete’s foot (the reason Alya doesn’t do sports, apparently), a lack of interest in their family’s profession (“Being a doctor really isn’t for me,” Nino said once) or general necessity of being perfect in every single way (there are days when she genuinely admires Chloé). They can live in house-boats and be scared of cheaply-done horror-film costumes and have their hearts broken and lie to get what they want and–

–Kagami isn’t (allowed to be) envious. (So) she’s not.

But Adrien, Adrien can smile and laugh and tease and dance in the same way the rest do, and she doesn’t understand how he does it – a little awkwardly at times, but nevertheless  _ perfectly _ , as he does everything else. She admires him for being able to do both like a philistine admires the first painting that’s ever touched them: with a lack of comprehension but with  _ feeling.  _

She thinks they’re still the same, though, if only because the others are not like them (not even Chloé or Lila, too, for all their self-aggrandizement). She thinks that matters most, so she dares to be brave – she talks to him, looks him in the eye, smiles, hopes, speaks with her mother ( _ again and again and again,  _ never quite telling her the truth, but coming close enough), hangs out with Marinette and the others, tries shifting the dance a bit – a foot there, a hand there, a remark–

–but he evades her when she does that, like a cat no less liquid than its shadow. She knows he doesn’t quite know this variation of the dance because she can see how Marinette stumbles through it around him, but she doesn’t know if he’s unwittingly yet willingly closing his eyes out of foolishness or lack of interest. 

She decides to be brave. She hopes it to be the former, nevermind how it taints him. 

_ (You shouldn’t idolise,  _ her mother’s voice says in her head, but Kagami can be foolish too, sometimes, if it suits her.  _ Take that, mother!  _ She wants to say,  _ Much as you may not like it at times, my mind is my own. _

But that is childish indignation, and Kagami is not allowed to be childish. So she isn’t.)

Kagami waits and Kagami watches and Kagami notices – something else. She notices his breath quicken, his foot lag, his hands shake–

And she notices them stop around Nino when the boy plays him his new mix; his step quicken next Alya’s as they’re chatting while walking to Starbucks; his breath come out in a relieved sigh, body relaxing, when Marinette walks into the room... 

(It’s unconscious, she is sure.)

Kagami notices how he tenses up around her, too. His smile is no less true each time, though, and she knows his heart doesn’t lie, so she tries her shot and spends nights watching her phone for a text and days with extra bruises from training while he falters, staggers, somehow stumbles his way without falling until the end of the number, deny her once, twice, only to smile at the end just as sincerely as usual when he finally says ‘yes’.

This is a new dance they’re starting now. Feet close to each other, a hand on her waist, a whisper in her ear, a thumb on the corner of her mouth wiping off excess ice cream. It’s normal for it to be tense, she knows from forbidden films and hidden books and videos watched in the dark of her room after her mother’s gone to sleep. She knows it.

But his smile is still the same. It doesn’t change when he’s looking at Marinette rather than at her. It’s unconscious, she is sure.

(But isn’t that the  _ point _ ?)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very interested in reading what anybody else thinks of this interpretation; I admit this was written in one short jolt of inspiration, so there may be a lot of things I haven't considered. 
> 
> I'm also on [Tumblr](https://noirshitsuji.tumblr.com/) if anyone wants to reach out to me on there. Otherwise, thanks for reading!


End file.
